While rushing through urban areas of today, you can see millions of attention dragging commercials everywhere you look. If you keep your eyes open more carefully you’ll also find lots of artistic expressions of thoughts and wishes using public walls as communication platforms; expressions created by individuals that are reflecting diverse opinions, which might not necessarily be shared by the whole of society and often not occur in the mass media. In Delhi these days you can see graffiti, stencils and stickers with a clearly political message – on flyovers, bus-stands, street-signs and auto-rickshaws.

Corporate Wealth Games
by nocwg2010
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48202244@N06/4417197746

Most people have no concept of the term 'open source' in general, or the maybe more specific term “open source software” (OSS) in particular. Even a little bit more confusing, many people from the industry use the term “Free and Open Source Software” (FOSS), and that is also the one the author is using throughout this article. But in order to grasp the subject, let us first clarify it a little more:

Let us start from the beginning, with the word “free”. Although many people have an immediate idea of the meaning of this rather simple word, many do not see the double meaning here. Most commonly, this double meaning is explained by the “free as in free beer, but also free as in free speech” idiom.

India is going Open Source (Tux the penguin is the unofficial linux mascot)

As a result of stronger ties between Germany and India, cultural relations between the two countries have found new impetus drawn from a longer tradition of German-Indo cultural exchange. Foreign cultural policy experiences multiple incentives and support on both sides, which makes it useful to establish sustainable structures of cultural dialogue. However, a number of factors could be listed to shed light on the still asymmetrical nature that marks cultural relations between India and Germany. Among them are: different conceptions of foreign cultural policy, different stages of the respective art industry and cultural infrastructure, a historically determined imbalance of financial and infrastructural resources and the sheer ignorance in the way both countries have perceived the other.

Christian-Matthias Schlaga, Charge d'Affaires, German Embassy in India, together with Dr. Eckart Würzner, Lord Mayor of the City of Heidelberg, at a workshop of the University of Heidelberg's South Asia Institute that was organised by Knowledge Must in New Delhi

Nowadays, in India’s capital New Delhi everybody seems to be talking about the Commonwealth Games. New metro lines, construction of roads and flyovers, stadiums being renovated and many other buildings appearing out of nowhere, the whole of Delhi is changing under the impulsion of the Games. And that's only the beginning, as the Games start only in October. The vision of the Commonwealth Games is becoming increasingly visible all over Delhi – but what exactly is the Commonwealth?

The Commonwealth of Nations is an intergovernmental organisation of 54 member states on all the continents, bringing together about 30% of the world's population, which means around two billion people of diverse cultures and faiths.

In the past few years, the immigration debate in France has become more and more impassioned. A new ministry name, “selective immigration”, plans for new laws, changes in the Nationality Code and debates about deportation are the media’s daily bread. However, in France, this debate can’t be separated from the particular experiences of the several previous waves of immigration (Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, African) and especially of the North African immigration. Arab people, Islam and French suburbs are nowadays unavoidable topics in the immigration debate.

And as usual, you will never hear of the positive aspects (e.g. cases of successful integration), only of the problems that fuel the debate and grab attention. Very recently, for example, the controversy regarding the ticket given to a French Arab woman driver wearing a burqa led to a new project to revise the Nationality Code to remove the French nationality of her husband (acquired by marriage) who is suspected of polygamy and social benefits fraud. The extreme-right parties happily jump on these kinds of stories to demand the strengthening of laws against immigration.

Let’s try to rebalance the debate... What is the reality of the North African immigrants and their ”heirs” (as the European Union sometimes refers to them) in France today?

The information and news about Pakistan these days show us a dark picture of the country and there doesn’t seem to be too much reason to believe in the improvement of the country’s uncertain future. Our stereotypes about Pakistan, media images and public opinion often lead to false conclusions. To many observers politics in Pakistan seem more and more infiltrated by radical beliefs, religious fundamentalism, corruption, the military or authoritarian leadership.

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